btr reads pjato:the lightning thief
by runningtonirvana1997
Summary: what happens if big itme rush and thier girlfriends discover the percy jackson books and that everything that happens in them are real? r&r
1. Chapter 1

Enjoy!  
>AN= I DO NOT OWN PJATO OR BTR. THEY BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS.<br> Logan's POV

We got back from Rocque Records. Gestavo told us that he was going to Fiji for awhile. When we got to the apartment, James went to the bedroom he shared with Carlos, who was jumping on the couch. Kendall sat on the couch watching a Minnesota Wilds game. I went to mine and Kendall's room to read in peace. When I sat on my bed, I felt someting poke me in the back. I jumped and turned. What I saw surprised me. It was a freaking box. I picked it up and carried it to the living room.  
>"Hey Logie, what ya got there?" Carlos asked as he stopped jumping. Kendall turned around and asked,"What's with the box?"<br>"I found this on my bed. I have no clue who it's from.", was my reply.  
>James came in and said as he sat on the couch,"Well, open it!" I sat down and opened the box. "It's books. Five of them. With a note addressed to us. It says:<p>

Dear Big Time Rush members,  
>We feel the need to give you these books for future reference. When you're done reading these books, come to New York. We will meet you there.<br>From,  
>Greek gods and goddesses"<p>

When I finished reading, we started laughing. After we calmed down, Kendall asked,"What are the names of the books?"  
>I took out the books and read,"It's a series. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief; The Sea of Monsters; The Titan's Curse; The Battle of the Labyrinth; and The Last Olympian."<br>"Well, how about we read these books for the heck of it. We got nothing else to do.", Kendall said. We agreed. "Logan, you read first."

I picked up The Lightning Thief and found the first chapter.  
>"CHAPTER 1: I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER" I read.<p>

"Wow I can already tell this is going to be good!" Carlos said.

(Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.)

"What's a half-blood?" James asked while looking at me for the answer.  
>"A child of an Olympian god and a human." I answered. I was going to say more but Kendall said,"Just keep reading."<p>

(If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.  
>Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.)<p>

Carlos whimpered and jumped behind the couch. Kendall reached back, grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him back onto the couch.

(If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe none of this ever happened.  
>But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.<br>Don't say I didn't warn you.)

"Why would he be warning us?" James asked.  
>"It's fiction! How should we know?" I said and kept on reading.<p>

(My name is Percy Jackson.  
>I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.<br>Am I a troubled kid?  
>Yeah. You could say that.<br>I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan-twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.)

I was going to say 'sweet' when Kendall said,"Logan, we know what you're going to say, but keep reading."

(I know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.)

I waited for them to start laughing, but they didn't. So, I kept reading.

(But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.  
>Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee.)<p>

"What's tweed?" asked Carlos "It kinda has the same texture as wool," James replied, to our surprise.

(You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.  
>I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.<br>Boy, was I wrong.  
>See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.)<p>

We all 'Oooo'ed in sympathy for him.

(And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.)

We laughed at that.

(And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.  
>This trip, I was determined to be good.<br>All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.)

James mimed puking at those words. I had to hit him in the back of the head to get him to stop so we could continue.

(Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.)

Kendall's POV When Logan finished reading, he had what we call his 'thinking face' on.  
>"Logie has his thinking face on, I wonder what he's thinking", Carlos said as he walked over to stand in front of Logan and waved his hands frantically in front of his face. Logan stood up, with the book in his hands, and started pacing, looking at the paragraph he just read, muttering things like,"...scrawny...acne, beard...sixth grade...crippled...disease in legs..." When he looked up, his eyes were glazed over. He asked,"Where's the dictionary?"<br>"It's in your desk since the rest of us never use it," I said. When Logan was in our room, I whispered to James and Carlos,"What do you think he's thinking about?"  
>They both shrugged. Logan walked in and sat down in his seat. He set The Lightning Thief on the couch and began flipping through the dictionary. After a couple of minutes, he found what he was looking for. He said,"I know what Grover is."<br>We must've had confused looks on our faces because he rolled his eyes, picked up the book we were reading, and reread the last paragraph to us. When he was finished, he looked at us like he was excpecting us to catch on. "Are you serious? There is no leg disease or disorder that prevents you to walk normally, but allows you to run like normal. He shouldn't have acne and the formings of a beard in sixth grade." As he picked up the dictionary, he said,"If I'm correct, this book is about the Greek gods and goddesses, so Grover has to be one thing, a satyr." We finally caught on. He set the dictionary down on the coffee table and began to read again.

(Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.  
>"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.<br>Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."  
>He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.<br>"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.)

"How can someone that scrawny do that?" James asked. "Everyone can do that," I said while motioning for Logan to keep reading.

("You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."  
>Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.)<p>

Logan stopped and looked at us with a worried expression on his face, but went back to reading without saying anything.

(Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.  
>He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.<br>It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.  
>He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.)<p>

"Kind of like Logan's 'devil's glare'" James said. Logan glared at him so hard he was shaking. "Logan," I said,"just keep reading."

(Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.  
>From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say,"Now honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.<br>One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said,"You're absolutely right.")

Nobody's POV

Logan stopped as the door to the apartment opened and their girlfriends came in. Lisa went over to sit in Logan's lap; Kylie sat down beside Kendall, who put an arm around her; Jamie and Carrie also went and sat by their boyfriends.

"You guys are actually listening to Logan read? What happened to you guys?" Jamie asked teasingly. The guys told their girlfriends the run-down of the story so far, then they continued.

(Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.  
>Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said,"Will you shut up?"<br>It came out louder than I meant it to. The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.  
>"Mr. Jackson," he said,"did you have a comment?"<br>My face was totally red. I said,"No, sir.")

"Whose face wouldn't be red?" Lisa asked.

(Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"  
>I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?'"<br>"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."  
>"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and-"<br>"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.  
>"Titan," I corrected myself. "And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-")<p>

"Eeew!" said Kylie as she buried her face into Kendall's chest.

("Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.)

They all laughed.

("-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued,"and the gods won."  
>Some snickers from the group.<br>Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend,"Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications,'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"  
>"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said,"to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?")<p>

"BUSTED!" the guys shouted. Their girlfriends hit them in the stomach to get them to stop shouting and continue the story.

("Busted," Grover muttered.)

Everyone laughed at the coincidence.

("Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.  
>At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.<br>I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."  
>"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"<br>The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.  
>Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said,"Mr. Jackson."<br>I knew that was coming.  
>I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"<br>Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go-intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.)

Lisa and Logan had their 'thinking faces' on.

("You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.  
>"About the Titans?"<br>"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."  
>"Oh."<br>"What you learn from me," he said,"is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."  
>I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.<br>I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted:'What ho!' and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunnner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No-he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.  
>I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.<br>He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.)

Lisa's and Logan's 'thinking faces' intensified. "WHAT ARE YOU TWO THINKING?" everyone else yelled.  
>They both looked up and said,"Nothing." And with that, Logan started reading again.<p>

(The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.  
>Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.)<p>

Lisa looked at Logan, shaking her head, saying,"Global warming, yeah right."

(Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.  
>Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.<br>"Detention?" Grover asked.  
>"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not genius."<br>Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said,"Can I have your apple?")

They laughed.

(I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.  
>I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.)<p>

Logan stopped and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. Lisa got off his lap, turned him around, and laid his head in her lap. She started combing her fingers through his dark brown hair, calming him down. He started reading.

(Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.  
>I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends-I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.)<p>

"I hate her and I haven't even met her," Lisa said while glaring at the book as if Nancy was real and should be cowering at the intense glare.

("Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.  
>I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times,'Count to ten, get control of your temper.' But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.)<p>

"A wave?" Lisa asked. "That's kind of like what I hear when I get pissed."

(I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming,"Percy pushed me!"  
>Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.<br>Some of the kids were whispering:"Did you see-"  
>"-the water-"<br>"-like it grabbed her-"  
>I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.<br>As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-"  
>"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."<br>That wasn't the right thing to say.)

"No, it wasn't. You never guess what your punishment is going to be!" Lisa said.  
>"How do you know that?" James asked.<br>"I back-talked a teacher once, and I got detention for it," she answered.  
>Before anyone asked anything else, Logan began reading again.<p>

("Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.  
>"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."<br>I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.  
>She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.<br>"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.  
>"But-"<br>"You-will-stay-here."  
>Grover looked at me desperately.<br>"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."  
>"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."<br>Nancy Bobofit smirked.  
>I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.)<p>

"Like Lisa's and Logan's 'devil's glares' combined," Carlos said. Then he became the reciever for their glares.  
>"Just read, so we can continue," Kendall said.<p>

(Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrence, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.)

"How'd she get there so fast?" Jamie asked.

(How'd she get there so fast?)

They laughed.

(I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.)

"I don't think so," Carrie said.

(I wasn't so sure.  
>I went after Mrs. Dodds.<br>Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.  
>I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.<br>Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.  
>But apparently that wasn't the plan.)<p>

"Huh?" everyone asked.

9I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.)

Lisa's 'thinking face' was on again.

(Except for us, the gallery was empty.)

"Uh-oh," Lisa and Logan said.

(Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.  
>Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...)<p>

"Who would want to do that?" James asked.  
>"Apparently, Mrs. Doods does," Logan said before continuing.<p>

("You've been giving us problems, honey,' she said.  
>I did the safe thing. I said,'Yes, ma'am.")<p>

"Yes, go with the safe thing. Lisa would probably say,'What the bleep are you talking about?'", Kylie said. Lisa just rolled her eyes while everyone but Logan started laughing.

(She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"  
>The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.)<p>

"What the-" before Lisa could finish, Logan started reading again.

(She's a teacher, I though nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.)

"Why would she hurt you," Carrie thought,"they're nice."  
>Everyone else gave her an 'are you crazy' look.<p>

(I said, "I'll-I'll try harder ma'am."  
>Thunder shook the building.<br>"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain.")

"PSYCHO!" everyone yelled.

(I didn't know what she was talking about.)

"Niether do we!" Carlos shouted.

(All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.)

All the girls rolled their eyes.

(Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book & now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.)

"That's the stupidest book someone ever wrote or even thought of!" Lisa yelled.

("Well?" she demamded.  
>"Ma'am, I don't..."<br>"Your time is up," she hissed.  
>Then the wierdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.)<p>

Lisa almost lunged for the dictionary and was turning the pages so fast, you would've thought she knew the freaking thing by heart. Then, her eyes widened as she said,"Mrs. Dodds is a Fury."  
>"A what?" pretty much everyone asked, except Logan.<br>"The Furies," Lisa read,"are three cruel earth goddesses of revenge and retribution. They are terrifying-looking creatures with horrible features. Their breath burns and poisonous blood drips from their eyes. Their heads are wreathed with snakes. In Greek myths, the Furies were sisters. Their names were Alecto, Magaera, and Tisiphone. They punished crimes such as murder and injustice, and they were reputed to continue punishing a sinner, even after his death, until he showed remorse."  
>There was silence until Logan started to read again.<p>

(Then things got even stranger.)

"What can get stranger than a Fury appearing as your math teacher?" Carlos asked.  
>Thunder boomed.<p>

(Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.)

"What can a f****** pen do to that thing?" Lisa yelled, along with Kendall and Jamie.

("What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.  
>Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.<br>With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore.)

"What? Is it a pencil now?" everyone asked.

(It was a sword-Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.  
>Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.<br>My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.  
>She snarled,"Die honey!"<br>And she flew straight at me.  
>Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.<br>The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!  
>Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.<br>I was alone.  
>There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.<br>Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.  
>My hands were still shaking. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.)<p>

"They weren't contaminated with anything!" everyone shouted.

(Had I imagined the whole thing?)

"NOOO!" everyone yelled.

(I went back outside.  
>It had started to rain.<br>Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said,"I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt.")

"Who?"

(I said,"Who?"  
>"Our teacher. Duh!"<br>I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.  
>She just rolled her eyes and turned away.<br>I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.  
>He said,"Who?"<br>But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thuoght he was messing with me.  
>"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious.")<p>

"Yes," Lisa said,"it is, since you just killed your math teacher, who just happened to be a Fury."

(Thunder boomed overhead.  
>I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.<br>I went over to him.  
>He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."<br>I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.  
>"Sir," I said,"where's Mrs. Dodds?"<br>He stared at me blankly. "Who?"  
>"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."<br>He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?")

"That's the end of the chapter", Logan said.  
>"I want to read!" Lisa said. Logan handed her the book.<br> READ AND REVIEW PLEASE!


	2. Chapter 2

HERE'S THE SECOND CHAPTER!  
>ENJOY Thank you, my wonderful reviewers!<br>Sorry its taken so long, im trying to help my grandparents with financial stuff.  
>On with the story! Nobody's P.O.V<p>"CHAPTER TWO:THREE OLD LADIES KNIT THE SOCKS OF DEATH," Lisa read.<br>"Great, another exciting chapter," Kendall said.

(I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle.)

"It wasn't a hallucination," everyone said.

(For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr-a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip-had been our pre-algeaba teacher since Christmas.  
>Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.)<p>

"I probably would, too," Lisa said before she went back to reading.

(It got so I almost beleived them-Mrs. Dodds had never existed.  
>Almost.<br>But Grover couldn't fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exsist. But I knew he was lying.  
>Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.)<p>

"Nah," Carlos said,"you think?"

(I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.  
>The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my doorm room.)<p>

"Sweet!" Lisa said, eyes bright with excitement.  
>Everyone else, besides Logan, looked at her like she was crazy.<p>

(A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy.)

"Awesome!" Lisa yelled.

(One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.)

"Poor people," Kylie said.

(I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.)

Lisa snorted.  
>"What?" James asked.<br>"It's just that I was sent out into the hallway in science," Lisa said. Logan looked astonished since science was one of his favorite subjects.  
>"Well, the teacher hated me," she responded.<br>"He would've loved you if you hadn't called him a fat son of a b**** just because he called your mom one," Jamie said.  
>"He should've known better," was all that Lisa said.<p>

(Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped.)

"Oh no," everyone said,"not the water thing again."

(I called him an old sot.)

'I would've said worse,' thought Lisa, Jamie, Kendall, Logan, and James.

(I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.)

Logan reached for the dictionary and started to look it up. When he found it, he busted out laughing.  
>"What?" everyone else asked.<br>"Old sot means habitual old drunkard."  
>Everyone started laughing until Lisa calmned down enough to read.<p>

(The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.  
>Fine, I told myself. Just fine.<br>I was homesick.  
>I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.<br>And yet...there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how he'd survive next year without me.)

"Lisa," Kylie, Jamie, and Carrie said,"he's like you."  
>"How?" everyone else asked.<br>"Lisa always puts others before herself," Kylie said. "And judging by what we've read so far, Percy would do the same."

(I'd miss Latin class, too-Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.  
>As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to beleive him.<br>The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards.)

"So that's what dyslexia's like," Carlos said. "Cool."  
>Lisa glared at him before reading again.<p>

(There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.)

"Low self-esteem," Lisa muttered.  
>"What?" Logan asked.<br>"Nothing."

(I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.  
>I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. 'I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.'<br>I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.  
>I never asked a teacher for help before.)<p>

"Maybe that's why you're failing," James said. Lisa glared.  
>"Le-Le?" Kylie asked her adopted sister warily.<br>"What?"  
>"Why do you glare at anyone who makes fun of Percy's dyslexia?" Jamie asked.<br>Lisa started looking at anything but everyone in the room.  
>Then she said,"I didn't tell you guys this earlier, but my sisters had signs of dyslexia."<br>"But isn't dyslexia a genetic disorder?" Carrie asked.  
>"I think it sometines can be, cause my dad had it," Lisa said.<br>"But doesn't that mean that you have it, too," Carlos asked.  
>"No," she said. "I got lucky."<p>

(Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Acacdemy with him thinking I hadn't tried.  
>I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.<br>I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said"...worried about Percy, sir.")

"Whatt?"

(I froze.  
>I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.<br>I inched closer.  
>"...alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too-")<p>

"Who's they?" everyone besides Logan and Lisa asked.  
>"I think it means monsters," they said together.<p>

("We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."  
>"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead-line-")<p>

"The what?"

("Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."  
>"Sir, he saw her..."<br>"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."  
>"Sir, I...I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."<br>"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall-")

"He's gonna..." Carlos said. "Well, I don't know what he's gonna do."

(The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.)

"IDIOT!" James, Jamie, Carlos, Carrie, Kendall, and Kylie yelled together.

(Mr. Brunner went silent.)

"Crap!" everyone said.

(My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.  
>A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheel-chair bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.)<p>

"Whaaa?"

(I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.  
>A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.)<p>

Lisa and Logan had their thinking faces on again.  
>"What's up you two?" Jamie asked.<br>They didn't answer.

(A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.  
>Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice.")<p>

"What's that got to do with anything?" Jamie asked.

("Mine either," Grover said. "But I could have sworn..."  
>"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow.")<p>

Everyone groaned.  
>"I thought you two liked exams?" Kylie asked the braniac couple.<br>"We do to a point," Lisa said.  
>"If it was for the whole day," Logan said,"I don't know what I would have done."<p>

("Don't remind me."  
>The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.<br>I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.  
>Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.<br>Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.)

"He doesn't believe it," Carlos said.  
>Everyone rolled their eyes except Carrie.<p>

("Hey," he said, bleary-eyed.)

"What does bleay-eyed mean," Kylie asked.  
>Lisa grabbed the dictionary and, after flipping some pages, said,"Sleepy eyes."<p>

("You going to be ready for this test?"  
>I didn't answer.<br>"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?")

"Oh, yeah," Kendall said sarcastically. "I'm fine considering I just heard my best friend talking to a teacher about me living or not."  
>"Don't joke about that!" Lisa said while throwing a pillow in his face.<br>"About what?" Then Kendall's eyes widened. "Oh, sorry!"  
>She glared at him then said,"You don't seem like it."<p>

("Just...tired."  
>I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.)<p>

Jamie, Kylie, and Carrie looked at Lisa with raised eyebrows.  
>"What?" she asked.<br>"Does that remind you of anyone, guys?" Kylie asked while keeping her eyes on Lisa.  
>"Yep," Jamie said, also keeping her eyes on Lisa.<br>"Who?"  
>"Lisa," Carrie said. "How?" everyone besides the three asked.<br>"She'll ignore someone when that question is directed at her."

(I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.)

"I understand," Lisa said.

(But one thing was clear:Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.)

"That's because you are if you are the son of some god we're thinking about," Lisa said while ignoring the confused looks of everyone besides Logan.

(The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,)

Everyone groaned again.

(my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.  
>For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.<br>"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's...it's for the best.")

Lisa slapped her forhead and muttered in Cherokee,"Idiot."  
>Seeing everyone's confused faces, she explained. "He said that in front of the whole class. Combine that with the fact that Percy has a little bit of low self-esteem and that Mr. Brunner was his favorite teacher, he's gonna be mortified."<p>

(His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me.)

"They'd embarrass anyone," Kylie said kindly.

(Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.)

Everyone glared at the book, and comined with the devil's glares of Lisa and Logan, it was surprising that the book didn't burn.

(I mumbled,"Okay, sir."  
>"I mean..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.")<p>

Lisa put the book down and went into Logan's and Kendall's room. When she came out, she had a pen and paper.  
>"What are you going to do with that?" Jamie asked.<br>"I'm going to write down the names of all of the people I need to get even with when this is all over." And as she said that, she wrote the names 'Nancy Bobofit' and 'Mr. Brunner'.

(My eyes stung.)

"Why?" Carlos asked and recieved a pillow in the face.

(Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the whole class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.)

Lisa wrote next to Mr. Brunner's name 'Kick a** until he is mortally injured.'

("Right," I said, trembling.  
>"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say...you're not normal, Percy.)<p>

"Oh, that's nice," Lisa scoffed.

(That's nothing to be-"  
>"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."<br>"Percy-" But I was already gone.  
>On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.<br>The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland.)

"I wanna go there!" all the guys said. The girls looked at their boyfriends like they were crazy.

(Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month.)

"I wanna go there!" all the girls said. The guys looked at their girlfriends like THEY were crazy.

(They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents.)

"That doesn't mean anything," Lisa said.  
>"Huh?" Carlos asked.<br>"I mean they may be rich in money, but Percy has something that they probably don't have."  
>"What's that?"<br>"Love."

(Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.)

"If you were a nobody then why do you have five books about yourself?" James asked.

(They asked me what I'd be doing this summer)

"At least they have manners," Jamie said.

(and I told them I was going back to the city.)

"Cool," everyone said.

(What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs)

The guys groaned and recieved a pillow in the face from Lisa, who had a german shepard named Lone Wolf, or Wolfie for short.

(or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.  
>"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."<br>They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.)

"Take back what I said about them having manners," Jamie said.

(The only person I was dreading saying goodbye to was Grover, but as it turned out I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.)

Lisa's thinking face was on again.

(During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occured to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.  
>Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.)<p>

"I wouldn't have either at that point," everyone said.

(I said,"Looking for Kindly Ones?")

"Yeah, give him a freaking heart attack, why don't you," Jamie said.

(Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha-what do you mean?"  
>I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.)<p>

"NO!" Kendall, James, Carlos, Jamie, and Carrie yelled. "You never confess that kind of stuff!"

(Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?")

"Oh, not much," Lisa said sarcastically.

("Oh, not much.)

"Are you sure you two aren't related?" Jamie asked.  
>"Let's see," Lisa looked up at the ceiling in thought. Logan (who got up when Lisa lunged for the dictionary in the first chapter) looked over at her with a raised eyebrow.<br>"Nope," she finally said.

(What's the summer solstice deadline?"  
>He winced. "Look, Percy...I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers..."<br>"Grover-"  
>"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and..."<br>"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."  
>His ears turned pink.<br>From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."  
>The card was in fancy script,)<p>

Lisa grabbed the paper off the table and wrote 'Whoever wrote business cards'.

(which was murder on my dyslexic eyes,)

Lisa wrote next to the newest eddition 'Sick Wolfie'

(but I finally made out something like:  
>Grover Underwood Keeper Half-Blood Hill Long Island, New York 800-009-0009)<p>

Logan went to his and Kendall's room and came out with his laptop.  
>When he sat down, Lisa asked,"How are you going to pinpoint the number?" He didn't say anything until he was on Google Earth and said,"Can you give me the number, babe?"<br>Lisa repeated the number as Logan typed it in. When it came up with the result, he looked at the screen in confusion.  
>"What is it?" everyone else asked.<br>"It's a strawberry place that delivers strawberries to New York, Manhattan, cities in that area."  
>"Maybe that's a cover name," Kendall said.<br>Logan's eyes widened and he said,"Why didn't I think of that!"  
>When he turned off his computer, Lisa started to read again.<p>

("What's Half-")

"That's what we're wondering," Jamie said.

("Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um...summer address.")

"That would've worked if he didn't pause," Kendall said.

(My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.  
>"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."<br>He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."  
>"Why would I need you?"<br>It came out harsher than I meant it to.  
>Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I-I kind of have to protect you."<br>I stared at him.  
>All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.)<p>

"Are you positively sure you two aren't related?" Kylie asked.  
>"Yes, why?" "Because that's something you did back home," Jamie said.<br>"People made fun of you?" the guys asked.  
>"Yeah, they did," Lisa said. "Jamie because of her shortness, Kylie because she hangs out with us, and Carrie because they thought she was a re-re."<br>"They didn't make fun of you?" James asked.  
>"Nope," Kylie said. "And they knew not to make fun of us if they didn't want to be possibly killed."<br>"I wouldn't go that far," Lisa said.  
>"You nearly put a guy in a coma," Jamie said.<br>"It depends on how big the guy was," Kendall said.  
>"He was bigger than James," Carrie said.<br>The guys' eyes widened at the thought. They turned toward Lisa and said,"Remind us to never get on your bad side."

("Grover," I said,"what exactly are you protecting me from?")

"Monsters," everyone said.

(There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.  
>After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.<br>We were on a stretch of country road-no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.  
>The stuff on sale looked really good:heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice.)<p>

Suddenly, there was a growl. Everyone looked around except Logan and Lisa, who were looking at Carlos, who was holding his stomach.  
>"What was that?" Kylie asked.<br>"It was Carlos' stomach," Logan and Lisa said together.  
>"Well, I'm hungry," was all he said.<br>"We'll eat after this chapter," Lisa said.

(There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.  
>I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.<br>All three woman looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.  
>The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking straight at me.)<br>"That's what I thought when I first met your grandparents, Lisa," Jamie said.  
>"Really?"<br>"Yeah, but I think that's because we were looking around the place like 'Whoa! This is so cool!'", Kylie said.  
>"Oh, yeah!" Carrie said.<br>"When did you guys meet her grandparents?" Logan asked.  
>"When we were seven," Kylie said.<br>"A couple years since we first became friends," Jamie said.  
>"Where was it?" Logan asked.<br>"Outside Fort Hudson, Texas," Lisa answered. "Why?"  
>"Do you guys remember a little boy who used to ride horses with you guys?" he asked.<br>"Yeah," Kylie said,"his name was," she paused as the answer came into everyone's head.  
>"Hi, KK," Logan said. He recieved a pillow in the face from Kendall's girlfriend.<br>'I met my future boyfriend at my grandparents ranch,' thought Lisa,'I guess I'll have to thank them for that.'

(I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.)

'That's odd,' everyone thought.

("Grover?" I said. "Hey, man-"  
>"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?")<p>

"What does that have to do with anything?" Jamie asked.  
>Lisa suddenly grabbed the dictionary and started flipping through it. When she found what she was looking for, she paled to a sickly white.<br>"Babe," Logan said,"what is it?"  
>As to answer his question, she read,"The Fates are three Greek goddesses of destiny and fate, also known as the Moirae. They are timeless old hags who weave the threads of destiny that control everyone's life. Their names are Clotho, who spins the thread of life, Lachesis, who allots the length of the yarn, and Atropos, who snips the thread and decides when life will end. All the good and evil that befalls everyone is woven into their destiny and cannot be altered. The Fates control the destinies of all. Even the greatest gods are subjected to their decisions."<br>"But what does them looking at Percy have to do with anything?" Carlos asked.  
>"I think that if they appear in front of you, that you'll die soon," Logan said.<br>Silence, then Lisa began to read again.

("Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?")

"Not funny," everyone said.

("Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."  
>The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors-gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears.)<p>

Lisa began to read a little bit shakily.

(I heard Grover catch his breath.  
>"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."<br>"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."  
>"Come on!" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.<br>Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for-Sasquatch or Godzilla.  
>At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.<br>The passengers cheered.  
>"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"<br>Once we got going, I started feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.)

'Why's that?' everyone thought.

(Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.  
>"Grover?"<br>"Yeah?"  
>"What are you not telling me?"<br>He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"  
>"You mean the old ladies?)<p>

James was about to say something, but a warning look from Logan and Kendall shut him up.

(What is it about them, man? They're not like...Mrs. Dodds, are they?"  
>His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse that Mrs. Dodds. He said,"Just tell me what you saw."<br>"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.")

Everyone shivered at that.

(He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost-older.  
>He said,"You saw her snip the cord."<br>"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.  
>"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."<br>"What last time?")

"That's what we're wondering," Kylie said.

("Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."  
>"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"<br>"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."  
>This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.<br>"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.)

"Kinda," Lisa said.

(No answer.  
>"Grover-that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?")<p>

"Yes," Lisa said.

(He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.)

"Who wants to read next?" Lisa asked.  
>"I will," Kendall said.<br>"But I thought we were gonna have lunch?" Carlos asked.  
>"Fine, I'll read the next chapter after we eat."<p>

review please


	3. Chapter 3

ENJOY!

After everyone ate, they went back to the living room.  
>Kendall picked up the book and read,"CHAPTER THREE:GROVER UNEXPECTDLY LOSES HIS PANTS, that's a little odd."<p>

(Confession time:I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.)

"Idiot," everyone said.

(I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?")

"We understand," everyone said again.

(Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.  
>"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.)<p>

Suddenly, Carlos burped loudly.

(A word about my mother, before you meet her.  
>Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theroy that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school in her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.)<p>

All the girls were near tears while the guys had grave looks on their faces.

(The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.)

"Aww," all the girls said.

(I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.)

Everyone was confused at that.

(See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.)

Everyone sighed sadly.

(Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.  
>She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.<br>Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano,)

Logan turned on his computer and typed in the search engine,'Gabe Ugliano'.  
>"He's a missing white male in his 40's from Manhattan," he answered the unasked question.<br>"How long has he been missing?" Lisa asked.  
>"4 to 5 years," he answered.<p>

(who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,)

Lisa wrote on her list of names,'Gabe Ugliano.'

(then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick-named him Smelly Gabe.)

Everyone laughed at that.

(I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.  
>Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her,)<p>

Lisa wrote by his name,'Put in coma'.

(the way he and I got along...well, when I came home is a good example.  
>I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.)<p>

"Eugh," everyone groaned.

(Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar,"So, you're home."  
>"Where's my mom?"<br>"Working," he said. "You got any cash?")

If looks could kill, Kendall was surprised he wasn't six feet under.

(That was it. No 'Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?'  
>Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskluss walruss in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.)<p>

"Why did she marry him?" James asked.

(He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would puch my lights out.)

Lisa looked like she wanted to rip the book to shreds, burn it, bury it, track down Smelly Gabe, and do the same things to him.

("I don't have any cash," I told him.  
>He raised a greasy eyebrow.<br>Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.)

Everyone laughed.

("You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"  
>Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here.")<p>

'I like him,' Lisa thought.

("Am I right?" Gabe repeated.  
>Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.)<p>

The girls looked disgusted.

("Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dolllars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."  
>"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"<br>I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in their except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my suff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer. I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.)

All of a sudden, thunder boomed. Everyone ran to the window and saw that the ocean was raging and seemed to have a war with the sky, like it was described in the first chapter.  
>Then it started to pour down rain.<br>"That was kinda random," Kendall said.  
>Logan and Lisa shared a look and their eyes widened. It went unnoticed.<p>

(Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.)

Everyone shuddered as thunder boomed again.

(But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remember Grover's look of panic-how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone-something-was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.)

Everyone shuddered again.

(Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"  
>She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.<br>My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.  
>"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"<br>Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples", the way she always did when I came home. We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?  
>I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that,)<p>

"Boys," all the girls muttered while rolling their eyes.

(but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.  
>From the other room, Gabe yelled,"Hey, Sally-how about some bean dip, huh?")<p>

Everyone glared.

(I gritted my teeth.  
>My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.)<p>

"We agree," everyone said.

(For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.)

"Wow, that must have been a good spin," Carrie said.

(Until that trip to the museum...  
>"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my consience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"<br>"No, Mom.")

"Proof, again!" Jamie yelled.  
>"Of what?" Lisa asked, but she had a pretty good idea.<br>"That you and Percy are probably related!" Jamie answered.

(I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.  
>She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.)<p>

"Unlike some people," Lisa said with a pointed look at Kylie, Jamie, and Carrie.

("I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."  
>My eyes widened. "Montauk?")<p>

"Huh?"  
>Logan typed in the search engine and read,"It's some sort of beach up in New York."<br>"Oh."

("Three nights-same cabin."  
>"When?"<br>She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."  
>I couldn't believe it. My mom and I haven't been to Montauk for the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.)<p>

Everyone glared at the book again as thunder boomed louder than before, causing everyone to bounce and Carrrie to jump into Carlos' lap.  
>"I'm scared of storms," she said.<p>

(Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled,"Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?")

"No," Kendall said like he was reading," said Percy, we were trying to ignore your fat, lazy a** that doesn't belong here."  
>Everyone snorted.<p>

(I wanted to punch him,)

"I wanna do worse," Lisa said.

(but I met my mom's eyes and understood she was offering me a deal:be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.  
>"I was on my way, honey,")<p>

"Who would call that thing 'honey'?" everyone asked.

(she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."  
>Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"<br>"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go.")

Lisa was glaring at the book muttering curses in Cherokee by the time Kendall read that sentence. Kendall turned to Kylie and said,"Please calm her down, she's scaring me."  
>Kylie turned toward her silently raging adopted sister. "Uh, Le-Le?" When she didn't respond, Kylie tried again. And again. And again. Until she turned toward Kendall and said,"I got an idea." She turned toward Jamie. "Jamie?"<br>"Yeah?"  
>"Go slap Lisa and see if that works." "Ok." Jamie went over to her black-haired and blue-banged friend and slapped her. One problem, though. It didn't work. Then, all the faucets in the apartment turned on by themselves. When everyone was done turning them off, except Lisa, who was still glaring at the book, James, Kendall, Kylie, and Carrie were wet from the showers, or in Carrie's case, the hose on the kitchen sink. How that happened, they don't know.<br>Jamie suddenly had an idea. "Hey, KK?"  
>"Yeah?"<br>"Can you go get our dogs?"  
>"Sure."<br>Kylie left and returned in a few minuets with four dogs following her. A white chihuahua ran to Jamie, while a chocolate brown one ran to Carrie. A light brown toy poodle followed Kylie to Kendall. A black and brown german shepard ran to Lisa and jumped in her lap, causing her to stop glaring at the book and shout "Wolfie!" while she hugged him.  
>When everyone was settled, with Chloe, the white chihuahua, sitting on Jamie's lap, Papi, the chocolate brown one, sitting on Carrie's lap, Rocky, the toy poodle, sitting on Kylie's lap, and Lone Wolf, or Wolfie, sitting on Lisa's and Logan's laps, Kendall began to read.<p>

("Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added. "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works.")

"She's gonna cook her way out of this?" Lisa asked dangerously calm, while the other girls were glaring at the book. Even the dogs started growling at it.

(Gabe softened a bit.)

The girls glares were added by the guys while the dogs growls grew louder.

("So this money for your trip...it clothes budget, right?")

"Her what?" Jamie asked.

("Yes, honey," my mother said.  
>"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."<br>"We'll be very careful."  
>Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip...And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.")<p>

"How about if I kick you in your soft spot," Lisa said," and make you sing soprano for a week."

(Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.)

"AGAIN!" Jamie yelled.  
>"Jamie has gone crazy," Lisa muttered in Cherokee to Logan who snorted and ignored the questioning looks.<p>

(But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.)

"Lisa would have done it anyway," Kylie said.  
>"Yeah, I would have," Lisa said.<p>

(Why did she put up with this guy?)

"That's what we're wondering," Carrie said.

(I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?)

"We're wondering that, too," Carlos said.

("I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."  
>Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.)<p>

"Which he probably won't be able to do," Lisa said, which everyone snorted at.

("Yeah, whatever," he decided.)

"He was probably tired from all the hard work," Lisa said.

(He went back to his game.  
>"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about...whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"<br>For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes-the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride-as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.)

'Now that he mentions it,' Lisa thought,'I do, too.'

(But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.)

Everyone glared at that.

(An hour later we were ready to leave.)

All of a sudden, Wolfie, Rocky, Papi, and Chloe started growling at the window. They went to it and started barking at it.  
>Logan, James, Kendall, Carlos, Lisa, and Jamie went to it, looked out the window, but saw nothing, except that it was still storming. That just confused them even more.<p>

(Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cokking-and more important, his '78 Camaro-for the whole weekend.  
>"Not a scartch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag.)<p>

"Like he'll be the one driving the d*** thing!" Lisa shouted.

("Not one little scratch."  
>Like I'll be the one driving.)<p>

"AND AGAIN!" Jamie yelled.

(I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.)

Lisa's eyes went from a bright sea-green to a hurricane-brewing sea-green.

(Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I couldn't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges,)

"What do you think it was?" Kendall asked.  
>Lisa and Logan shrugged.<p>

(but I didn't want to stay long enough to find out.  
>I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.<br>Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.)

'What!' Lisa thought. 'The ocean's never to cold to swim in!', thinking of when her parents took her and her sisters when she was 11 to Gulf Shores during Christmas break.

(I loved the place.)

'There we go.'

(We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she met my dad.)

Everyone smiled sadly at that.

(As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worrying and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.)

"It looks like her life source is the sea," Lisa said thoughtfully in Cherokee. Kendall, James, and Carlos turned to their girlfriends and said,"Can you please teach us Cherokee?"  
>"Nope."<br>"Why not?"  
>"Logan will have to teach you."<br>Before they could open their mouths, Logan said,"No."  
>"Your mean!"<br>"Thank you."

(We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.)

Lisa had a good guess about the blue food.

(I guess I should explain the blue food.  
>See, Gabe had told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This-along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano-was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.)<p>

Jamie was about to say something, but Kendall read ahead of her.

(When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.)

Carlos' stomach growled again.

(Mom told me stories about from when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.)

Carlos gasped.

(Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk-my father.)

Lisa had a distant look on her face as she thought,'If C.J and Makenzie weren't dead, they'd probably ask about both Mom and Dad.' Then she closed her eyes laid her head against Logan's shoulder, who wrapped his arm around her pulled her against him so she had her head on his chest. Wolfie was looking at everyone like he was dying to say,'Say anything and I'll bite your legs off if you run.'  
>Kendall took that as a cue to start reading again.<p>

(Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.  
>"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too.)<p>

"Like my dad," Lisa muttered against Logan's chest, who responded by wrapping both his arms around her and hugging her gently.

(You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.")

Carlos was going to say,'Kinda like Lisa, except she got her eyes from her mom,' but he didn't want to get slapped by Jamie, Kylie, and Carrie, punched by Kendall and James, and possibly killed by Logan. So, he wisely kept quiet.

(Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."  
>I wondered how she could say that.)<p>

"What do you mean?" everyone asked.

(What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.)

"That doesn't matter to parents," Lisa said with tear-filled eyes. "Parents will love you no matter what you do."  
>Then she retreated into Logan's chest.<p>

("How old was I?" I asked. "I mean...when he left?"  
>She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin." "But...he knew me as a baby."<br>"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born.")

Kendall paused. He knew what it felt like to be raised by a single parent. He never knew his dad, either. His mom said that he got his eyes from him, and his love for anything to do with water, and that included ice hockey.

(I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember...something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.  
>I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never seen me...<br>I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.  
>"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"<br>She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.  
>"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think...I think we'll have to do something."<br>"Because you don't want me around?")

"PERCY!" everyone yelled, their eyes wide at his stupidity.

(I regretted the words as soon as they were out.)

"Good," Lisa said.

(My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I-I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."  
>Her words reminded of me of what Mr. Brunner had said-that it was best for me to leave Yancy.<br>"Because I'm not normal," I said.)

"Everyone's unique in their own way," Kylie said.

("You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."  
>"Safe from what?")<p>

"Monsters," Carlos said, earning looks from everyone but Carrie like he was going insane.

(She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me-all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.  
>During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told then that under his broad-rimmed hat, the man had only one eye, right in the middle of his head.)<p>

Jamie lunged for the dictionary, to everyone's surprise, and started flipping through the pages.  
>"I think I found what that thing was," she said. Then she started to read.<br>"Cyclopes are giant one-eyed monsters whose name means 'circle eye'. Legend says that they were so ugly that their father locked them away in the Underworld. When Zeus beat Kronos in the War of the Titans, the Cyclopes were freed and became the makers of Zeus' dreaded thunderbolts. They were skilled workers and also made Poseidon's trident and Hades' helm, as well as a silver bow and arrows for Artemis. They lived underground, making weapons in the forges of the gods and were immune to fire. They had excellent hearing, could smell monsters, and speak in others' voices."  
>"Does it say who the father was?" Lisa asked.<br>"It says mostly Poseidon, why?"  
>"Whose Poseidon?" Carlos asked.<br>Jamie flipped through the dictionary until she read,"Poseidon was the god of the sea. He was the son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Hades. His weapon was a trident powerful enough to shake the earth, causing storms and earthquakes. Poseidon had a throne in Mount Olympous and an undersea palace where he usually lived with his wife Amphitrite. His symbol is the trident, and his sacred animals are the dolphin and the horse."  
>Lisa's eyes widened and she said,"Lost at sea."<br>"Huh?" everyone else besides Logan asked.  
>"I think I found out who Percy's dad is," she said.<br>"Who?"  
>"Who did we just read about?" she answered with a question.<br>Everyone's eyes widened and as Kendall started to read again.

(Before that-a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.)

"Woah," everyone said.

(In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.  
>I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.)<p>

"Yes," James said,"risk your lives so you can spend time where mom met dad."  
>He got a pillow in the face for that.<br>("I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy-the place your father wanted to send you. And I just...I just can't stand to do it."  
>"My father wanted to send me to a special school?"<br>"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp.")

"CAMP HALF-BLOOD!" everyone shouted.

(My head was spinning. Why would my dad-who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born-talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she mentioned it before?)

Everyone looked at Logan and Lisa, who shrugged.

("I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I-I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good.")

Seeing the guys' questioning looks, Lisa said,"A mother would do anything to protect her child or children. That's why people sometimes refer to it as 'Mama Bear'."  
>"Oh."<p>

("For good? But if it's only a summer camp...")

"Good point," Lisa said.

(She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.  
>That night I had a vivid dream.<br>It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.)

"I know the horse is Posiedon," Kylie said,"but who's the eagle?"  
>Lisa started to mutter in Cherokee until she said out loud in English,"Zeus."<br>"But why are Zeus and Posiedon fighting?" Carrie asked.  
>Kendall flipped the book over and looked at the title and said,"I think Zeus believes someone stole his lightning bolt."<br>And with that he started to read again.

(The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle's wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.  
>I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, 'No!'<br>I woke with a start.  
>Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses.)<p>

The girls and their pets shuddered at the thought.

(There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.  
>With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said,"Hurricane.")<p>

Lisa shuddered at the memory of being in one when she was 5, visiting her cousins in Florida before they died during Hurricane Katrina.

(I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten.)

"Or more likely," James said,"Posiedon did."  
>Thunder boomed.<p>

(Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.)

That was the same reactions to everyone in the room.

(Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice-someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.  
>My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.<br>Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain.)

'What's he doing there?' everyone thought.

(But he wasn't...he wasn't exactly Grover.)

"What does that mean?" Carlos asked.  
>"Grover's a saytr," Logan said,"and the chapter title was him losing his pants."<br>"OH!"

("Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"  
>My mother looked at me in terror-not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.<br>"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?")

"A lot," Carlos said, earning a pillow in the face.

(I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.  
>"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"<br>I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on-and where his legs should be...where his legs should be...)

"Wow he's slow," Jamie said. "Instead of in that department and the gender thing, Lisa and Percy could be twins."  
>Lisa just shakes her head.<p>

(My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Tell me now!"  
>I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.<br>She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said,"Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"  
>Grover ran for the Camaro-but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.<br>Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.)

"Who's gonna read next," Kendall said.  
>"I will," Kylie said.<p>

Review please


	4. Chapter 4

ENJOY! This chapter is for all the ones who died on 9/11. This is also for their families. And for the brave first responders who gave their all in finding all the survivors.

"MY MOTHER TEACHES ME BULLFIGHTING," Kylie read.  
>"Uh-oh," everyone said.<p>

(We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.  
>Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.)<p>

Everyone rolled their eyes.

(But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo-lanolin, like from wool. The smell of wet barnyard animal.  
>All I could think to say was,"So, you and my mom...know each other?")<p>

"Well," James said,"when you put it like that."

(Grover's eyes flitted to the review mirror, though there were no cars behind us.)

"I don't think he was looking for cars," Carrie said.

("Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."  
>"Watching me?"<br>"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend.")

Everyone smiled at this.

("Um...what are you, exactly?")

"Don't say it," Lisa said before Jamie could say anything.

("That doesn't matter right now." "It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey-")

Everyone laughed at that.

(Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"  
>I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.<br>"Goat!" he cried.  
>"What?"<br>"I'm a goat from the waist down."  
>"You just said it didn't matter.")<p>

"Man, he's an idiot," James said.  
>"Either that or he's being a smarta**," Jamie said,"cause that's what Lisa would have done."<p>

("Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"  
>"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like...Mr. Brunner's myths?"<br>"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"  
>"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!")<p>

Jamie was about to say something, but Kylie kept on reading.

("Of course."  
>"Then why-"<br>"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."  
>"Who I-wait a minute, what do you mean?")<p>

"That's what we're wondering," Carlos said.  
>"He means being a half-blood you 'idiot'," Logan said.[AN: words between apostrophes are said in Cherokee by Logan and the girls (if you want to find out why, go to my friend's profile Jamie frm Big Time High School, if that doesn't work, type in Big Time Friends, it should be either on pages 8, 9, or 10.)]

(The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer that before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.  
>"Percy," my mom said,"there's to much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."<br>"Safety from what? Who's after me?"  
>"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.")<p>

"'SHIT!'" Lisa said, her eyes going wide at the thought of Hades on someone's tail.  
>Everyone turned pale, even the dogs stopped wagging their tails.<p>

("Grover!"  
>"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"<br>I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it.)

"None of us would be able to," Carrie said.

(I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination.)

Everyone gasped in shock.

(I could never dream up something this weird.  
>My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.<br>"Where are we going?" I asked.  
>"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight;she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."<br>"The place you didn't want me to go."  
>"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."<br>"Because some old ladies cut yarn.")

Thunder boomed again and when they ran to the window, they could see the waves slamming harder than ever against the beach.

("Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means-the fact that they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to...when someone's about to die."  
>"Whoa. You said 'you'."<br>"No I didn't. I said 'someone'."  
>"You meant 'you'. As in me."<br>"I meant you, like 'someone'. Not you, you."  
>"Boys!" my mom said.)<p>

Everyone laughed a little at that.

(She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid-a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.  
>"What was that?" I asked.<br>"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."  
>I didn't know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.<br>Outside, nothing but rain and darkness-the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill me.  
>Then I thought about Mr. Brunner...and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.)<p>

Everyone paled again as the dogs whimpered, thunder boomed, and lightning striked, lighting up the room with pale light as the electricity flickered.

(I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.)

Everyone jumped as thunder rolled louder than ever before.

(I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said,"Ow."  
>"Percy!" my mom shouted.<br>"I'm okay..."  
>I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our dirver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in. Lightning.)<p>

The windows shook as the force of the sea wind was thrown upon them as if in anger.

(That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!")

"NO!" everyone yelled as the lights flickered again.

(He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!  
>Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.<br>"Percy," my mother said,"we have to..." Her voice faltered.  
>I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.<br>I swallowed hard. "Who is-"  
>"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."<br>My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edged were sizzling and smoking.  
>"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy-you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"<br>"What?"  
>Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.<br>"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."  
>"Mom, you're coming too.")<p>

"For some reason she won't be able to go," Lisa said.  
>"Why?" Carlos asked.<br>"This camp is for half-bloods only, and Percy's mom is a human," Logan answered.  
>Everyone closed their eyes for a minute, trying to figure out what happens to Sally, then Kylie starts to read again.<p>

(Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.  
>"No!" I shouted. "You are coming with me. Help me carry Grover."<br>"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.  
>The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands-huge meaty hands-were swinging at his sides.)<p>

Everyone started shaking, even Kylie's voice was shaking as she started reading again.

(There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head...was his head. And the points that looked like horns...)

Kendall lunged for the dictionary as he looked up a monster he heard once before from stories his mom had once told him. "The Minotaur was a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man," he read. "He was the son of the wife of King Minos of Crete, and a bull sent to Minos by Poseidon. Minos asked Daedalus to build a palace with a huge maze of rooms in which he kept the monster imprisioned. Every year he fed it with seven young men and seven girls sent from Athens. One year Theseus, the son of Aegus, the king of Athens, went to Crete with the other young men, having vowed that he will kill the Minotaur. King Minos' daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of thread which allowed him to escape from the labryinth once he had killed the monster."  
>"I remember reading that story back in 8th grade for English," Lisa said. "It said that he was the son of Posiedon."<br>"So," James said. "That will be two sons of Posiedon's that will fight the Minotaur."  
>Thunder boomed.<p>

("He doesn't want us," my mother told me. "He wants you. Besides, I can't cross the property line."  
>"But..."<br>"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."  
>I got mad, then-mad at my mother,)<p>

"Why at her?" everyone thought.

(at Grover the goat,)

"He's only half goat," Logan said.

(at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.)

"That's because he's half a bull," Kendall said.

(I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom.")

Before Jamie said anything, Chloe jumped up and started licking her face.

("I told you-"  
>"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover.")<p>

Carrie looked over at Lisa, and before she could say anything, her glare made her shut up.

(I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.  
>Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through the wet waist-high grass.<br>Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine-bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear-I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms-)

Everyone laughed a little at that, but the paleness didn't go away.

(which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.  
>His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns-enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.<br>I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.)

"You're carrying a satyr and you can't believe that the Minotaur is real?" Jamie asked.  
>"Which is more dangerous," Lisa said," the satyr or the Minotaur?"<br>"The Minotaur."  
>"Then that's why."<p>

(I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's-"  
>"Pasiphae's son," my mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."<br>"But he's the Min-"  
>"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."<br>The pine tree was still too far-a hundred yards uphill at least.  
>I glanced behind me again.<br>The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows-or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.  
>"Food?" Grover moaned.<br>"Shh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"  
>"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."<br>As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chasis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.  
>Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.<br>Oops.)

Everyone laughed again.

("Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way-directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"  
>"How do you know all this?"<br>"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."  
>"Keeping me near you? But-"<br>Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.  
>He'd smelled us.<br>The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.  
>The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.<br>My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."  
>I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right-it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turrned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.<br>He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.  
>The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.<br>The bull-man stormed past like a frieght train,)

"Frieght Train's in this?" Carlos asked.  
>"It's a figure of speech, Carlitos," Kendall said.<p>

(then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.  
>We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.<br>The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.  
>"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"<br>But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her around the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.)

"LET GO OF HER YOU MONSTER/SON OF A B****!" everyone shouted as the dogs growled.

("Mom!"  
>She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word:"Go!"<br>Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply...gone.)

'Light?' Lisa thought. 'If this is about the Greek gods, then maybe someone is holding her hostage.'

("No!"  
>Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strenght burned in my limbs-the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.<br>The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helplessly in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.  
>I couldn't allow that.<br>I stripped off my red rain jacket.)

"'Brilliant!'", Lisa whispered under her breath.

("Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"  
>"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.<br>I had an idea-a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.  
>But it didn't happen like that.<br>The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.  
>Time slowed down.<br>My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.)

"How did he do that?" everyone asked.

(How did I do that? I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.  
>The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning was still going strong.)<p>

Like it was here.

(The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.  
>The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed me up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear:forward.<br>Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tounge off.  
>"Food!" Grover moaned.<br>The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then-snap!)

"How did he do that?" everyone asked again.

(The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.  
>The monster charged.<br>Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.  
>The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disentagrate-not like my mother, in a flash of golded light, but like crumbling sand, blown away like chunks in the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.<br>The monster was gone.  
>The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held onto Grover-I wasn't going to let him go.<br>The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's. They both looked down at me, and the girl said,"He's the one. He must be.")

"The one for what?" everyone asked.

("Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside.")

After a minute, Kylie said,"Who wants to read next?"  
>"I will," James said.<p>

review please 


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